From: "Erica VD Ginter" <eginter at klgai.com>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: The Constitution and the Citizen
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 10:45:26 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

A science writer acquintance of mine, legally in the U.S. for many years,
almost got deported when he suddenly discovered, two weeks before it
expired, that the legal department of his publication hadn't done squat to
get it renewed. They had always taken care of it in the past so he
assumed.... Well, you know what you get when you assume. It finally got
taken care of, but his American fiancee was a basket case in the interim.
She hadn't exactly planned on quitting her job and moving to England.

And a British biology PhD working for the American Institue for Biological
Sciences (where I used to work) almost didn't get her visa renewed once
because her caseworker had to be convinced, with documentation and
affadavits from all and sundry, that Oxford was a "real" university.

Something tells me the INS is targeting the wrong people! Although these
exaples are of course not the most heinous.

Erica

-----Original Message-----
From: Elspeth Kovar [mailto:ekovar at radix.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 3:42 AM
To: WSFA members
Subject: [WSFA] Re: The Constitution and the Citizen

Steve Smith wrote:
>
> "Strong, Lee" wrote:
> >
> >         Haddad's crime is a real, nonpolitical crime that he actually
> > committed.  The website you introduced into this discussion admits that.
It
> > is legitimate to arrest a person on one crime that he has actually
committed
> > even if you think he is ALSO guilty of another.
>
> Yep.  We have a number of "crimes" that are very useful for nailing
> people we don't like.  Overstaying a visa is one.  Given the famous
> efficiency of the INS (see
>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A1
6787-2002Mar12
> for the most famous recent example), overstaying a visa is common to the
> point of being unavoidable.

Steve, that doesn't make sense.  It translates into "Because the agency
that is supposed to kick me out if I overstay my visa is inefficient
overstaying my visa is unavoidable."  Run that by me again?

Look, people know when their visas expire.  They know that if they stay
in the US afterwards that they're here illegally.  The fact that there
has, until now, been no concerted effort to track down such people
doesn't change the fact that they're knowingly committing a crime, with
no quotes whatsoever.

Elspeth